We all know the answers, of course, in these days of multiplex installations, of "chocolate-box" cinemas and of "projectionists" who seem to spend more time selling popcorn than looking after the show.
But if you look carefully around whichever country you are in there will still be the occasional gem - a cinema dedicated to showing films in the best possible light. The city of Melbourne in Australia has such a gem in The Astor Theatre and it is, indeed, a cinema in the grand, old manner!
The Astor knew its first existence in the early 1900s as the Diamond Theatre. It was built on the site of some old horse stables and, as was common in those days, it was part vaudeville theatre and part cinema. It then became the Rex Theatre and it continued under that name until the mid-1930s when it was demolished to make way for the building of a new cinema which opened as The Astor Theatre in 1935. The first film screened was "Hands Across the Table" starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert.
Those were heady days. The Astor had 1,700 seats and most of them were filled on many nights of week even though there were nine other cinemas in the immediate area.
The crunch came with the arrival of television broadcasting in Australia which was timed to coincide with the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. Audiences dwindled and cinema owners scrambled to survive by installing CinemaScope screens and sound systems.
The Astor coped better than most but the owners decided to sell-out in 1964. It seemed that the cinema was doomed - there were plans to turn it into a bowling alley or a local-council library.
It was saved at almost the last minute when an uncle of the present owner bought The Astor and added it to his chain of twelve specialised cinemas catering to the Greek community. Melbourne had, and still has, the largest Greek population of any city outside Greece and, for the next 17 years, the cinema prospered with a mix of Greek films and concerts.
Then, once again, audience numbers began to wane. This time the problems were caused by the introduction of a multicultural television channel, the growing popularity of video rentals and, as The Astor's owners put it, the continuing "Australianisation" of the immigrant population.
The Astor's screen went dark in 1981 and, once again, it seemed that the cinema's days were numbered - it looked as though it would end up as a bingo hall or a reception centre.
The building had been closed for more than a year when George Florence saw an opportunity to realise his life-long ambition to run a cinema.
He'd had a very-early exposure to movies - he remembers selling popcorn in one of his uncle's theatres when he was just four years old. It was not long before he decided he wanted to be a projectionist and, eventually, he went to work for the Village chain of cinemas in 1975.
However, being a projectionist just wasn't enough. He still had his dream of owning and running a cinema. But not just a cinema - it had to be what he saw as a "real" cinema. Florence was enamoured of the 70mm format and had watched with dismay the general decline in presentation standards and in the number of cinemas that could handle it at all. He was determined that, one day, he would own a cinema big enough to be able to show wide-screen formats as they were meant to be shown. That cinema turned out to be The Astor.
The "under new management" sign went up over the door and the cinema re-opened on September 17, 1982, with the 1933 classic, "King Kong".
For a while the The Astor saw something of a return to the early days with a mixture of concerts and films as Florence developed the basic format that is still so successful today - a different, two-feature presentation every day of the week with four features on Sundays.
But those first years were a hard struggle with the prospect of failure always just around the corner. George Florence held-down four different jobs - including his full-time job as a projectionist with the Village chain - and he put every cent of his wages into keeping The Astor open. His family pitched-in to help - his mother worked in the box office and his sister ran the candy bar.
Then, slowly, audience numbers started to improve as more and more people discovered the cinema's unusual and diverse programming and by 1985 The Astor was moving onto the road to success.
Another year went by and then Florence started an ambitious and costly programme to restore the cinema to its former glory and to update its facilities.
As always, his first priority was to improve the presentation of movies. He rescued a slightly-curved, 50-foot screen from a cinema that was about to be demolished and then the search was on for 70mm projectors. He found two Cinemeccanica RK60 dual 35/70mm projectors at a drive-in cinema that was closing. The projectors had been installed originally in The Regent theatre in the city before it had closed. They were in good condition because they had been used for only a couple of days a week after their move to the drive-in and they were just what The Astor needed. New projection and anamorphic lenses were bought and then a Dolby Stereo sound system was installed.
All of a sudden, it seemed, Melbourne had a new wide-screen venue that could handle 16mm (which is needed sometimes for local-festival films), 35mm flat, any of the 35mm 'scope formats and, of course, 70mm. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that the Cinemeccanica projectors can run at 30 frames-per-second as well as 24 so if you happen to stumble across a TODD-AO print of "Oklahoma!" around the place ...
With the presentation side of things taken care of, at least for a while, Florence turned his attention to the rest of the building.
Many of the seats had to be replaced (there are now only 1,150 to give more leg-room) and much of the plaster and paintwork was in dire need of repair. The restoration work was important because Florence believes that the ambience of a cinema is just as important to a moviegoer's overall enjoyment as is the movie itself.
There is still work to be done but much of interior does look magnificent. For example, take the upstairs foyers (yes, there are two of them). The first thing that catches the eye is their sheer size - they are huge by modern standards. Indeed, they would be big enough to hold at least two multiplex auditoriums (perish the thought). Then there is the carpet. Its design was loosely modelled on carpet at the Paramount Cinema in California and its 1930s feel fits The Astor perfectly. The foyers are softly lit and there are comfortable, somewhat-overstuffed armchairs along the walls - ideal for sitting and eating some of the cinema's famous cake at intermission (the cherry cake is definitely the best).
The auditorium has superb acoustics and a somewhat-quaint but endearing colour scheme. The 1930s feel is accentuated by several potted palms.
Just as important are the people who work at the cinema - they are all efficient and cheerfully friendly which contributes in no small measure to The Astor's success. And, of course, there is the cinema cat, Marzipan, who has been known to get a standing ovation as she races across the stage trying to catch the opening curtains.
The Astor has become a magnet for cinema lovers and particularly for wide-screen format enthusiasts - it is one of only two cinemas in the entire country still showing 70mm films regularly. Recent offerings have included "2001" (for which there was a brand-new 70mm print), "The Untouchables" and, of course, the four-hour version of Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" which broke all national records for a first-run season. The average audience at each session for the first three weeks, including daytime screenings, was 850 people! And it continues to get good houses at twice-weekly matinees.
George Florence is convinced that the 70mm format made a major contribution to the film's success. "It was certainly a factor in the audiences' enjoyment of the movie," he says. "Many people may not know the difference between 35mm anamorphic and 70mm but they do know they have seen something special - a huge screen, superb definition, rock-solid images and glorious sound."
He laments that a whole generation of people has never seen wide-screen movies presented as their directors intended. "They either go to see a movie on a comparatively-small screen at a multiplex or they wait until the video comes out. There is no way their experience can match that of seeing a film properly presented on a large screen.
"Until they see it for themselves, they simply cannot understand the days when the screening of a 70mm movie was an event - something you really looked forward to."
Florence is particularly scathing about video releases and the compromises that are forced on directors. "Many of them now tend to centre all the action so that the image still makes some sort of sense when it's cropped to a 1.33:1 ratio for television," he says. "But what's the point of filming in a wide-screen format if you don't use the whole image area?"
Branagh did not make any such compromises when filming "Hamlet" and the "pan-and-scan" video that was released in the US in July is a travesty - it makes a mockery of Alex Thomson's cinematography and the glorious sweep of the 70mm image is just thrown away.
Be that as it may, the success of "Hamlet" in 70mm has proved to be something of a watershed for The Astor which had not been a first-run house for many, many years.
It has put the cinema "on the map" and certainly helped to pay for the recent installation of a state-of-the-art sound system which has improved the presentation of all formats.
At the heart of the system is a Dolby CP500-70D processor for Dolby Digital and a decoder for 35mm and 70mm DTS. The Astor managed to get the last Dolby 70mm pre-amplifier to be manufactured and also has full split-surround capability.
And the projectors have been fitted with reverse-scan, analogue, infra-red readers for Dolby A, Dolby SR and mono soundtracks.
The auditorium side of things is also impressive. Behind the screen are six ElectroVoice 12-inch, low-frequency speakers and three EV wide-angle, HF horn speakers fed by six 750-watt RMS amplifiers manufactured in the US by QSC. But that's not all - there are also eight EV 18-inch sub-woofers fed with 3.5 kW RMS!
If you add the 24 surround speakers which are fed by four 750-watt RMS amplifiers you get a total of 11 kW of amplifier power!
Imagine how it sounds! You have not experienced real 70mm presentation until you see something such as the "bridal march" scene in "Hamlet" and break-out in goose-bumps at the stunning "wall" of crystal-clear sound that fills the screen as surely as does the image.
It is amusing, to say the least, to compare the results with what must have been possible with the cinema's original, 1929-design, Western Electric amplifier with its then-awesome power output of a staggering 15 watts! It is being restored so that it can be displayed in the foyer.
There is another glorious bit of history in the projection box - at the far end from the new rack of Dolby equipment is an ancient slide projector that uses a carbon arc. It is still in use even though it must be 60 years old.
With all of that, the projection box is somewhat crowded - there is no room for platters. But that suits George Florence just fine. He prefers to use reels and do reel changes because he feels it is kinder to the film. And, once having mentioned that, it was not difficult to get him back to the subject of the general decline in standards.
"It's happening all over the world," he said. "Commercial pressures mean that the multiplex installation is the only way the general exhibition industry can survive and make what might be regarded as reasonable profits. Those same pressures force operators to keep costs to a minimum and that means small staffs with minimal training.
"Here in Melbourne, projectionists used to be licenced by the state government and their training was intensive. But most of that seems to have gone by the board - it's not that much of an exaggeration to say that some projectionists now learn little more than how to lace-up a film and how to run the popcorn machine."
The duty projectionist at The Astor stays in the booth and keeps a close eye on the film and an ear on the sound. The audience never sees a blank screen in the normal run of events and the masks are always in the correct position for whatever format is being shown. In other words, The Astor is run in a very-different manner from that of some "chocolate-box" cinemas.
Most of The Astor's profits are ploughed back into improving the facilities and the next item on the agenda is the installation within the next six months of a new, curved screen which will be 62 feet wide and about 30 feet high. And, of course, both projectors will need new sets of lenses.
The new screen will not be in place in time for the forthcoming season of the 70mm restoration of "Vertigo" but it will be there for the new and exciting 70mm release of "Ben Hur" which will be coming to The Astor around Easter next year. And, without a doubt, it will make "Hamlet" look better than ever.
There is no compelling, commercial reason for having a screen even bigger than the present one - in fact, there is a reason to not have it. The new eyeline because of the increased height means that three rows of seats will have to be removed from the rear of the stalls.
So, why does George Florence do it? Why does he keep on improving the presentation of all formats? Why does he work as owner, manager and chief projectionist of The Astor? And why is he there from 11 in the morning until well after midnight every day of the week?
Quite simply, The Astor is his passion. It is a love affair. Long may it remain so!
ran@sub.net.au
(This article was first published in the August, 1997, issue of
Wide Gauge Film and Video Monthly in the US)
Melbourne, Australia